Y2W5 Day 4

Posted on March 8, 2012 by admin

AM:
27 min jog 2.5 miles
30 min elliptical machine

PM:
8 sets seated shoulder press
8 sets seated high pull downs (chin-up grip)
1 mile jog

Today was a fun day. The weather was nice and I did some driving around. I ended up at the range where I rented a glock 26 and a glock 30. I had fun punching holes in some paper targets!

Food today was much better than yesterday. I ate with purpose though I did snack. Dinner rocked! I did Salmon, spinach and lentils. I seasoned the lentils to have a middle eastern flare.

I got “the call” today.  I am going in to get my site ID card. I should be starting work really soon.

 

 

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Y2W5 Day 3

Posted on March 7, 2012 by admin

Another day passes uneventfully.

AM:
60 min elliptical machine

PM:
8 sets of bench press
8 sets of leg press
20 min elliptical stepper machine

Today was a pleasant day. It was cool in the morning but turned into a 60 degree day. I did not do much with it though as I had watched some more episodes of 24. My diet today was pretty bad. Dinner I was back on track with grilled chicken breast and a side salad. I marinaded the chicken over night in a garlic, salt and pepper bath. The flavors really soaked in and no other seasoning was needed.

 

 

 

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Y2W5 Day 2

Posted on March 6, 2012 by admin

Feeling better!

Looks like my sore back has passed.  I feel 100% again.  This morning I had fun with my AM workout.  I jogged a mile, did 40 minutes on the elliptical stepper machine and then did 10 minutes on the exercise bike.  It felt really good.

M Day was uneventful, I enjoyed some episodes of 24 season 1.  It is funny how it is action packed but the story drags on.  I think the Walking Dead has a similar feel to it, and to me is the only other show to flow like this and be enjoyable.  OK back to the blog…

In the afternoon I carried on with my weights plus cardio plan.  I did 8 sets of dumbbell over head presses and 8 sets of EZ-Bar curls.  I have it down now, it takes me between 25 and 30 minutes to do my weight lifting every day followed by 20 minutes on higher intensity cardio.  I feel like this is going to be a good routine to follow for a couple months and see where it gets me.   I think my muscles will grow during this time since I will be stimulating them more during each workout without tiring multiple muscle groups each lifting session.  Who knows, I may be wrong about that.  Time will tell.   No matter what I am still getting a solid 50 minutes of exercise in and that is good for me every afternoon.

Dinner tonight was a great tasting steak with mushrooms, baked sweet potato and steamed broccoli.  It was the best tasting steak we had in a while.  Funny thing was we got it from Target.

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Y2W5 Day 1

Posted on March 5, 2012 by admin

Happy Monday.  Well almost.

AM:
11 min jog
20 min bike
30 min elliptical

PM:
8 sets assisted dips
8 sets of leg extensions
20 min elliptical machine

Today was a cold day that even had flurries! I took it pretty easy and watched a 24 marathon. I was not into the series when it was on prime time but have enjoyed it here and there since catching an episode a few years ago.

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Y2W4 Day 7

Posted on March 4, 2012 by admin

A day in the woods!

Today was the day to skip the gym in the morning and go hiking near Great Falls, MD.  We saw some trails yesterday worth checking out and we decided to return there today.  It was chilly with temperatures in the high 40’s and low 50’s.  That did not slow us down one bit.  The terrain was hilly and rocky in parts, and level and soft under foot in others.  We hiked for a little over 2 hours and covered 5.28 miles.   

After that fun we went to the mall so my wife could get a new pair of running sneakers.  We hiked another 1-2 miles there between the walk from the parking spot, to the mall, walking the mall from shoe store to shoe store and then finally back to the truck.  Pretty wild.

After getting home I even found the motivation to go to the gym.  I did 8 sets of incline bench press, 8 sets of cable chest flies and 20 minutes on the elliptical stepper.  It was just the little extra I needed to do to feel good about today.

Tomorrow would have been my first day of work, but I have to wait for my background check to go through so I will be sleeping in!

 

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Y2W4 Day 6

Posted on March 3, 2012 by admin

WOW is my back sore!  I guess I pushed it pretty good yesterday.  I took some Advil today and was able to hit the gym and exercise.   I got an hour in on the elliptical machine.   For fun today we went hiking with my wife’s brother and his 3 daughters.  We went to Great Falls to see the river rushing by.  All  the rain we received the last few days really had the water levels high.

Before we met up with family I took a little break and rested on a bench while my wife went in to a visitors center.  I had the please of making the acquaintance of two geese.  They came around keeping their distance at first.  I used the universal language of food to communicate with them since I am not fluent in geese honking.  We became fast friends even with the language barrier.

The blue you see in the picture is my leg.  He came over and stuck his face over my lap to say hello.

The other one was more shy but still wanted to be friendly.

Once my wife returned I introduced her to my new feathered friends.   

We also took in some great scenery.

And I almost forgot, we made another friend while climbing some rocks.  He startled me as my face popped over the lip of the rock.  Like a trooper he stayed calm and even was willing to pose for a picture!

Fortunately it was his day off, otherwise he probably would have told me if I switched to GEICO I could save money on my auto insurance.

After the fun day in the wilds of Maryland we headed to Virginia for some dinner at a Chinese place.  It was a great day to share with family.  We were sorry to have missed out on one Bro joining us but he had some relaxing to do after visiting a dentist the day before.

Even after all this I still found my way to the gym for an evening workout.  This was the latest I ever went.  With my back still not feeling 100% I decided to weight lift doing leg presses only.  I did 15 sets starting at 180 lbs and went up to 720 pounds then back down to 360 pounds.  Once done I hit the elliptical stepper for 20 minutes  to get the sweat going again.

Today was a great day.  It had it all, nature that was up close and personal, family time, good food and exercise!

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Y2W4 Day 5

Posted on March 2, 2012 by admin

A wise man once said  “live every week like it’s  Shark Week”.  Well said Tracy Jordan, well said.

AM:
10 min jog
50 min elliptical stepper

PM:
8 sets of bench press
135-10
185-5,5,5
155-8,8,8
135-10,10
8 sets of cable triceps pull downs
8 sets of cable curls
6 sets of 45 to 50 count jumping rope

I have had many ups and downs while being unemployed. I have adopted a belief system simply put, I’ll believe it when I see it. There had been many “jobs” that did not materialize as presented by staffing agencies. One of my past disappointments actually materialized and came together after months of nothing. I was scheduled to start on Monday and there is another delay in place. I completely understand the organization needs to do a background check on me. That makes complete sense. I just wish I was not told Monday would be my start date only to find out today I have to wait until I am checked out. That could take 3 days or it could take a month. Bummer! I could be riding the pine again for another 30 days.

Nothing else to say about the day. It was a regular day in every other way. Watch out for the sharks!

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Y2W4 Day 4

Posted on March 1, 2012 by admin

Home, home at the range!

AM:


30 min jog 5K
25 min elliptical machine

 

PM:
8 sets leg extensions
8 sets dumbbell dead lifts
20 min elliptical stepper

Today was a beautiful day out. The weather was warm and sunny. I knew I had to get out of the house so I headed to the range to do some target shooting. Once I am back to work I will not have time to go during the day when the place is fairly empty. Today was all about narrowing down my search for my next pistol. Today was Glock day. I tried a G23, G19 and a G30. I really enjoyed the 9mm and the .45 caliber. The .40 caliber was my least favorite. I shot the 9mm best with the .45 next and finally the .40 cal. I am not rushing out to add to my collection, but have wanted a Glock for some years now and feel like this year might be the one for the purchase.  Enough about hobbies, back to my blog!

Dinner was enjoyable tonight as usual. I cooked some steak, some mushrooms and also spinach. It looked good and tasted good. There is just something enjoyable about eating steak, eating chicken does not have the same satisfaction.

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Y2W4 Day 3

Posted on February 29, 2012 by admin

Time to try something new!

AM:
15 min jog
45 min elliptical machine

I have been thinking of changing things up for my afternoon workouts. I have been alternating between cardio and weight lifting days. It has gotten to me to where I am but I have plateaued. So I am going to try lifting every afternoon with 20 minutes of higher intensity cardio. I will only do 1 exercise for 15 sets or 2 exercises for 8 sets each. I will work a particular exercise more intensely than I have been doing and will lift every day so my muscles will be constantly working through related exercises. For instance today I did 8 sets of assisted pull-ups (back/shoulders/arms) and dumbbell over head presses (legs/arms/back/shoulders) starting each repetition with the dumbbells on the ground. This took me 30 minutes to do. I then got on the elliptical stepper for 20 minutes and started at the max level and worked from level 20 down to level 16. It felt good. I will know if this is a good thing after 2 weeks.

Dinner tonight was something cool.  I made Mexican lasagna!  It is a variation on a nacho platter.  I took a lasagna pan, put a can of fire roasted tomatoes in the bottom, added a layer of tortilla chips (I crumbled some up to fill the gaps between the chips), then shredded cheese, sour cream and sliced Avocado, then another layer of chips, ground turkey, black beans, and another can of fire roasted tomatoes, then another layer of chips, and finally more shredded cheese and some crushed tortilla chips.  It was really good!   I seasoned the ground turkey with a taco meat seasoning pack.  We had it with some shredded lettuce on the side.

Today was a great day.  I feel good

 

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Y2W4 Day 2

Posted on February 28, 2012 by admin

Today was not the day I thought it would be.  I had planned to look into some computer parts and get an antenna for our roof so I can hook up our TV and see just how many channels we could get over the air.  Easy peasy.   So I go to a place to check on parts and as I am talking with a sales/tech guy we start putting some stuff together (on the computer making a list of needed parts) ,  before you know it I am building a complete new computer.  Not a bad thing but the cost was the same as buying a computer from Bestbuy.  It just would not make sense for me to spend hours assembling a computer, hours loading software and drivers only to have a system cost as much or more than buying a complete system from a store.  Maybe the parts are higher quality?  I don’t know.  Maybe the processor would be slightly faster?  I don’t know.   What I do know is I did not but a computer today.  I did go to another place and buy an outdoor antenna.  I figure i can install it in under an hour and go about my day.  Yep, did not happen.  I had to drill through the block wall to get into the basement, and use an extension ladder to get up to the roof.  We have an extension ladder.  It is a nice light aluminum one that for some reason was in 2 parts and missing the rope to pull it into the extended position.  I spent an hour putting the ladder together, adding some rope once I found it and struggled getting it in place, but not in that order.  I put the ladder together wrong.  It fit together wrong.  I did not have the rungs/steps facing the same way.  I also did not add the rope right away once I got the rungs corrected.  I tried to extend it fully while balancing it only to find I needed a rope to pull it fully into the extended place.  I was like a one man 3 stooges team.  I get it all worked out and climb the ladder to get to the chimney top so I can pull the antenna up to me then secure it up there.   Problem is the ladder is swaying a lot and I freeze 3/4 of the way up.  I just could not go up further.  At this point a neighbor comes over and we talk a while, all with me frozen on the ladder unable to go up higher.  I get down knowing there is no way I am climbing up to where I need to be.  As we talk my neighbor suggests I go to the front of the house and climb up to the low point of the roof then “just walk up to where I need to be”.   So that is what I did.  But it was not easy either.  The pitch on the roof is steep enough that I was sliding as I was stepping and did not feel safe.  So I had to climb all the way to the top of the roof so I could hang onto the ridge and scoot over the the side where I needed to be.  I then let go and slid down to the chimney to mount the antenna.  That went pretty easy.  Now I needed to climb back up to the ridge, scoot over to the center of the house and slide crawl back down to the porch roof and get on the ladder and climb down.  This simple task  that I thought would take an hour ended up taking 3 hours.  But it was worth it.  we get 40 channels over the air.  Granted many are never going to be watched by us, there are some Spanish ones, some french ones, even an Arabic one, so I guess I should not really say we get 40 channels.  With this in place I can now focus on connecting our laptop to the TV and testing out Hulu and other online sites for streaming TV shows.  If it works fairly well we will ditch our $100 a month cable service and pay the 8 dollar a month “premium” service through Hulu.  That will save us over 90 dollars a month.    We are willing to give up some of the features like On-demand shows and being able to record 2 shows at the same time.  I am messing with a TV tuner for the laptop so we may even be able to do some TV recording with my planned setup.  Now back to my regularly scheduled post…

AM:
60 minutes on the elliptical stepper

PM:
30 minutes on the elliptical stepper

Dinner tonight was a good one. I cooked some chicken thighs, tortellini and asparagus. I added Alfredo sauce and dinner was delicious.

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